


Wendigos

by TooManyPsuedonyms



Series: Mobile Thoughts [2]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Entirely Symbolic, Implications of Cannibalism, Left to Reader Speculation, M/M, Unbeta'd, Unidentified Timeline, Vague Native American/First Nation Culture Ideas, Wendigo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-12
Updated: 2018-03-12
Packaged: 2019-03-30 04:24:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13942545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TooManyPsuedonyms/pseuds/TooManyPsuedonyms
Summary: Will hides from Hannibal somewhere that can dry out his thirst for things too real to think about.





	Wendigos

**Author's Note:**

> Since Wendigoes are a thing in the show--more or less--and my degree is in Anthro/Socio studies...
> 
> I wrote some stuff down. I hope you like. Takes place... eh, somewhere in the series? Maybe after Season 2? Somewhere in the midst before the middle of Season 3? Or even at the very end of the series. Like a bad-end to Murder Husbands. Perhaps AUish. Mostly just sort of a disjointed ideas of Will's Nature and yearnings. Corrupted or not.

It's hot outside. The sun beats down on his shack. Wind rustles and rattles his bones heavier than the shutters. Dust swirls in beams and Will sweats from simply watching them. He hates the heat, but the desert is far from home. Farther, still, from Hannibal's reach.

 

He ran, as far and as fast as his legs could carry him. Because, he had to. He needed to breathe.

 

Will takes in dust and the sun, feeling suffocated, smothered, before turning over into the darkened corner of his bed where it's still dry. He goes back to bed for the day.

 

When he gets up, he's still sticky with perspiration, but this cools him off as the sun slowly sinks into the wavering horizon.

 

Will doesn't bother with coffee, or even tea. He settled for some iced Jameson--a gift from a neighbor quite a distance away. Until this point, he never returned the friendly gesture.

 

So, the brunet sits on a creaking swing hung at his porch side and looks past the crackled earth and saguaros. Flowers bloomed on the cactus a few yards away, bathing the nightly glow pinkish. The moon hangs heavy on the edge of his vision--the same caramel color of Hannibal's eyes. With a little more elevation it'll gleam nearly as white as the doctor's teeth.

 

Will hums as a lone coyote howls in the distance. He sits with a shot gun and waits with an empty belly.

 

...

 

It's much not later in the year when the heat becomes so unbearable, Will has to drive into town to buy some razors. He takes the cheapest ones. Idly, he looks at the fancier set of barber's tools behind the counter. He doesn't purchase them. Just nods at the shop keep--his neighbor.

 

She's an old woman, wise, part of the dislocated tribes of American Natives shuffled off into the unforgiving, unusable lands of the South West of the nation. Will feels guilty (for many reasons) as he interacts with her. She doesn't smile, and for that he's grateful. He'd feel like more of an ass already.

 

"Those coyotes are back," she mentioned off handedly, "Not letting meat rot on your property, are you?"

 

"No m'am," Will says, coins clinking on the counter. His shack is cheap because the government doesn't bother with the disputed borders the Natives fight for. They'll win more and more as the blood-ridden debt owed to the people grows wider. The debt is more than tears now, dry, soaked back into the land until the soil turned red. It'll simmer for now, and the scent of it will attract all sorts of meat-eaters. At least, that's how Will keeps dreaming about it.

 

"Yeah, you look the kind that doesn't eat meat," she said, mostly chuckling to herself. Maybe she's referencing the shaggy hipster beard that's starting to itch.

 

Will holds up his bag of razors and shot gun shells. "Not for long."

 

***

 

The old woman is surprised when he knocks on her door not a week later, holding a casserole. A weak attempt to make up for a gracious gift when he first moved onto the land.

 

"Well, well," she opens the door wider and ushers him inside, "Don't you look young."

 

Will laughs with a self-derided sense of victory. "I don't feel it,” he says as he rubs at his face self-consciously. His other hand balances the food in the cradle of his clammy palm.

 

"Suppose people like us never do," was her cryptic answer.

 

They sit, oh so politically incorrect, on her termite-rotted floor. Her remaining teeth munch and crunch along the edges of his so-called food. The long drive in his busted truck kept the food warm, but, he suspects the lady doesn't eat often enough to care.

 

"Gamey..."

 

"Mmmmm," he acknowledges and swallows his food hollowly, "Well, it's not proper livestock."

 

"Do I want to know?" she asks. Will shrugs. To say her home was dilapidated was to say his shack an actual house. Really, it was just a place to rest for a weary soul.

 

As he inspects the place, the woman finishes. She places foil over his pan, pauses, but goes to hand it back to Will. He thinks about it, but pushes the leftovers across the floor back to her. Her dark face crinkles, and gray brows smooth out in relief.

 

No, she knows hunger in a more immediate sense.

 

"You know, I hate coyotes," she responds as Will lounges.

 

"Aren't they sacred to you?" he asked, somewhat confused.

 

"To some," she said, rising to place the food in an old ice box in the corner. A portable grill was stationed, cold and quiet, right beside it.

 

"Navajo, right?" Will tried. She gave a bit of a shrug.

 

"To many. Apache too," she answered. Will nodded, not pressing. He wasn't going to remember how many tribes the Natives had before the white settlers scattered them to the unusable corners of the country.

 

"You don't mind?" Will vaguely questioned. She returned with a pile of tobacco. The smell of it rusty and strong in such a small space. She went to work rolling them along her floor mat they'd just used for a makeshift table.

 

"My people don't come from the dust. We came from the woods, the mountains. Green things, all around. Water. Snow. Seasons," she seemed lost in thought. Will thought about home--about fishing in the stream. Letting the coolness wash across his mind. He missed it. Sorely.

 

But it wasn't safe. Not anymore. Best to dry out his mind. Starve the urges where it can't grow. Focus on drinking--burn it all away: baptism by fire whiskey.

 

"The desert dwellers can keep their trickster God," she rumbled, interrupting his thoughts. Will focused in time to see her licking the paper and finishing by rolling it flat and secure, "Playing with carrion, chasing vermin, bah! He could follow me up river, but--"

 

She had a coughing fit here, and Will startled, moving to take a match box from her. Arthritic hands kept her from striking on her carcinogen. He lit a match, cupping a hand to the flame, and then her smoke. She took in a deep breath. The end sparked, a red flame burning white paper past the half-way point.

 

It seemed cathartic as she blew out a long stream, cleansing her soul through heat and ashes too.

 

Will truly missed the water. The greenery.

 

"I suppose I should thank you," she mused as Will's longing disappeared into curls of poison licking the low, wood ceiling, "One wendigo to another."

 

***

 

Will visited often. She didn't know about Hannibal, but she was happy to tell him all about her famous hunter grandfather and the stories of her particular people.

 

"Said Jack, the Cree, had hunted with him once," she reminisced as Will washed the windows. The yellowed panes caught his face—stubbly and tired, but, him. A person he could still recognize.

 

Will glanced over, the old woman sitting in her rocker in the blazing sun. It bleached her hair to a crisp bone color that stood out against a tanned hide.

 

"Almost lost ten men to that evil spirit," she said, knobby fingers held in the air. Her bare foot tapped a rhythm as she swayed, aimless. No shadows were cast as the ground sweltered below Will's booted soles.

 

"The wendigos, again?"

 

"Mm-hmm," she hummed through her cigarette, "Never did believe him until I saw one with my own eyes."

 

"What did it look like?"

 

"Ohhh, I suppose each spirit knows exactly what you fear the most."

 

"I wanna know, Grandmother," he pressed sweetly. She raised a brow at his term of endearment. Then, with a snort, patted the rail of the porch next to her. Will wandered over and half-sat-half-leaned against the termite-ridden support. The damp rag already drying against a crooked knee.

 

"Mine was..." she started, then shook her head, "I heard stories as child, you know. Some said it was a hairy beast."

 

"Like a yeti?" Will snickered.

 

She licked her chapped lips after taking a swig of alcohol. She seemed brave her memories...

 

Will sobered and waited.

 

"Others said... it had yellow fangs. Matted hair. Or, was a corpse," she breathed deep--lungs rattling through nicotine abuse--and Will gulped, feeling dread, "I guess mine was a combination of all the things I ever heard."

 

Will was silent as she tapped ash dazedly down her woven dress.

 

"Trickster gods shape-shift, you know," she looked over at him, "Whatever you need, whatever you want. That's what they do. To get you to trust them."

 

"And wendigos?"

 

"It's funny, how evil spirits mimic the gods," she brought her cig back to her lips, lined with so many wrinkles like the desert floor surrounding them; cracked with the weight of the blood of the past and then curdled by the heat of the sun. Or, perhaps, stoked by the fires of hell below.

 

"It was a coyote," Will whispered.

 

"You can only be lost in the woods for so long before you begin to starve."

 

"I'm sorry, grandmother."

 

"Let know no one tell you ya don't need it to live," she warned, "People are born meat-eaters."

 

***

 

Will dreamed of fangs glinting along the brambles, and the smell of fresh kill wafting over the craggily dunes. He was shattered awake with the coming of the sun. He felt hungry. Stomach howling as fierce as the beasts in the distance.

 

He threw on a flannel over his naked chest and tugged on boots. Climbed into his beaten down junker and let it idle until it rumbled awake like himself.

 

He went to visit Grandmother.

 

Lights flashed red and blue in the soundless flat her home was located on. The colors bounced along the open door to her hovel, and Will turned off his car. He closed his eyes and leaned his weary head back.

 

The sheriff’s department asked him the about last time he'd seen her.

 

"The night before. I fixed her cabinets for her," he replied, steadying his fatigued self on his own bumper, "I was gonna make her some breakfast. Drive her to her store for work."

 

"Awful neighborly of you," the sheriff said, eying the white man. Will hung his head, the heat sapping him of any snarky remarks.

 

"Was it... Did she--"

 

"The back screen was ripped opened. As far as we can tell, heart attack. The coyotes got to her body in the middle of the night."

 

Will buried his hands in his hair, "Next of kin know?"

 

"Do you know any?"

 

Will shook his head, "She only ever mentioned her grandfather."

 

"Reckon that's a bust," the officer replied, looking over as the ambulance wheeled out a black body bag. It was so dark compared to the sun-washed scenery around them, "Seeing as she was nearin' those triplet digits."

 

"Yeah. Guess so..." Will said, absently brushing the sweat from the back of his neck.

 

The other man just waved Will toward his unit car, "You can confirm it's her once we get back to town. Then, I guess, if ya want, you can decide what to do with the body."

 

***

 

Will knew animal bites--canine bites mostly--and what ripped at poor, old Grandmother was no coyote.

 

He didn't say so to the coroner who treated her body with the utmost respect. He wanted to ask what the burial rites were specifically but thought better of it. There was no way such a young Native who blended seamlessly with the white man's world would know--if the coroner even realized Grandmother wasn't actually Navajo. Will didn't really blame anyone though. He just signed off on the papers and brought her body back to his shack, lying about how he knew what she wanted.

 

Sad part was, he was mostly lying to himself.

 

***

 

Will waited in the empty house, shot gun full as his belly. The sun was melting into the hot plain of the desert. Grandmother said wendigos come out at night. He would wait until caramel eyes reflected the moon.

 

Only then would he pull the trigger.

 

A coyote howled mournfully in the distance.

 

Will hates the heat.

 

It's hot outside.


End file.
